Big Fish. Small Fish.

Before we begin this article, I’d like to quote a couple of lines I heard yesterday on the tube: “We should start where most new jobs do—in small businesses, companies that begin when an entrepreneur takes a chance on a dream, or a worker decides it’s time she became her own boss.”

We will come back to those lines later in the article. First, let me answer a couple of e-mails that came across to me last month.

In response to my Rocket Singh piece, many wrote in stating that it’s illegal to start up while in employment of a company. Some talked of loyalty and others of being fair to the company.

To all who wrote in: All the good things in life are illegal, immoral or expensive. Now, companies—and I mean big companies—have thrown out employees on a day’s notice over the last year and a half. I am guessing you call that fair and right, too.

And please throw that loyalty flag out the window. A job is akin to doing business. You are providing your skills and services for a fair price to a buyer. Loyalty is for family, not bosses.

However, these gentlemen also made a valid point. Starting and running a business while working is a task not for the ordinary. I agree that it’s tough enough just working the 9 to 5 grind, to start another shift from 6 to 12. And you know your employer is not going to go easy on you for your own business dreams.

This is why I was pleasantly surprised to read about Adobe’s Naresh Gupta in the last issue of Entrepreneur, who actively mentors entrepreneurs from within the R&D center he heads. Surely, losing an R&D asset for a company like Adobe can’t be that easily accepted? That Gupta does that in complete openness and with (probably) the company’s knowledge is commendable.
This is maybe because it’s a western company and it’s Adobe. The idea of Indian companies helping and nurturing entrepreneurs from within their ranks is as probable as an Indian coaching the Pakistani cricket team.

I have always wondered how our media talks of the big boys as ‘entrepreneurs’ and how they are fostering others. Huh? They do nothing for entrepreneurship. None, and I repeat none, have ever put their money into promoting Indian entrepreneurship and that says enough. It’s not wrong of them not to, though. Competition is never liked and capitalism does not call for fostering more.

What I was more appalled at, though, was a recent poll that named Wipro, TCS and Infosys as some of best employers in the country. Huh? The likes of the aforementioned three are the biggest sweatshops going around.

Thousands of tech graduates go streaming into these companies every year for a job that sees them work 12 hours a day on tasks that were done by a westerner for twice the money a few months ago. What bright talent are we losing in turning these men and women into cheap code monkeys for Uncle Sam and his brethren? How long before it hits us that we are to the world what Dharavi is to Mumbai, as an Entrepreneur interviwee said recently? What will happen when the West finds somebody cheaper?

And the lines at the start of this article? Barack Obama said them during his first State of the Union address to the Congress a few days ago. This, he said, is how the U.S. economy was going to be rebuilt and keep its top position against China and India.

This, I say, is how we should take that top position. Not by making cheap code monkeys out of our kids.

AUGUST SHARK is a once-failed, second time successful bootstrapper who resides in Mumbai. He can be contacted at august@stumpspeak.com.

Tags:
August Shark, big businesses, Rocket Singh